conflicts of interest, government ownership of the monopolies would seem an almost inevitable step.

A federal commission vested with power to fix prices would need to have jurisdiction over the entire business of the regulated corporations. The Interstate Commerce Commission and the courts have attempted to draw a line between interstate business and the intrastate business of the great carriers. The line, however, is not at all clear, and it is recognized that Congress may in effect regulate state commerce if it deems this necessary for the proper regulation of commerce which is interstate. To separate the interstate business from the state business of industrial concerns would be a hopeless task. At the outset, therefore, the control of the Federal government would have to be extended to cover all big business, and to cover it in all its phases. Indeed, this is what is advocated by believers in the policy of regulation.

Now the production and distribution of commodities, even by monopolies, is a far more complex process than the rendering of services in transportation or lighting. Public service companies, in the phrase of business, turn out a finished product, which is sold directly to the consumer. Many industrial concerns, however, like the steel companies, turn out products which are sold to other manufacturers, the finished product of one industry being the raw material of another. The producers of commodities are interdependent, and the fixing of rates for one would involve consideration of many others. An added complication is that price is only one term of the sale of goods, and this term could not be effectually fixed without fixing all other terms of sale. Some of these are the length of credit, discounts for purchases in quantities, method and time of delivery, and the right to return goods.

For business men themselves to determine the actual cost of past production, even for a single concern, is often most difficult. To determine in advance a cost which can be maintained over a considerable interval of time, during which many conditions may change in an unpredictable manner, they would regard as almost impossible. But the greatest difficulties in commission regulation would spring from the fact that the determination of theoretically just costs involves the fixing by the commission of all factors which enter into cost,

not merely the return upon investment, but wages and salaries, and all operating and maintenance charges.

In the earlier years of rate-regulation, the actual expenses of companies were generally accepted as constituting the necessary costs of operation. In recent years, the steadily increasing tendency has been to reject such figures and take instead theoretical figures based upon the commission's judgment of what costs ought to be. This tendency has been notably manifested in the recent decisions and opinions of the Interstate Commerce Commission. In accordance with this tendency, priceregulating commissions would sooner or later have to determine wages; indeed the increase of wages by boards acting independently of rate-fixing boards is intolerable, and for any long period, impracticable. Furthermore, commissions would have to determine operating methods and business policies, for costs of production depend upon such methods and policies.

It would then be for the commission ultimately to determine the tasks, the working conditions, and rewards of all those interested in any industry, and to lay out the methods to be pursued in that industry. And most important of all, the commission would have to determine the amount of the output of goods in every regulated industry. So

long as industries are in private hands, the amount of goods which will be produced depends directly upon the price; if the price is increased, more goods are produced; if the price is decreased, less will be offered. Consumers, therefore, would have to depend for their supply of goods, not upon the quick response of independent producers, but upon the judgment and action of the commission.

The questions most vitally affecting all those interested in any industryinvestors, managers, employees, and consumers of the product would then have to be settled by the price-regulating authorities. All this involves an infinite burden of detail, infinite argument, and also infinite delay, but what is most obvious is that there is so far little ground for even hoping that these problems could be theoretically solved in a manner satisfactory to the different groups interested. The actual outcome would be likely to be political, and politics would consist largely of a struggle for the control of the all-powerful regulating body. The contest would be a contest of wills rather than a contest of ideas or theories. Inevitably, the issue would be drawn between the control of the monopolies by the government and the control of the government by the monopolies. And there is but one probable outcome of such a conflict, and that outcome is the government acquisition of the industrial monopolies. This is precisely what was predicted by Karl Marx: first monopoly, then government ownership. Many acute students of the regulation of public service companies already believe that the complications of regulation even in this limited field will result in government ownership of these companies. The regulation of public service companies is very much simpler than the regulation of industrial companies, and so long as industry remains

To hold that commission-made prices necessitate monopoly and mean ultimate government ownership, is by no means to maintain that competition is all-sufficient. We cannot believe with the classical economists that industrial freedom necessarily results in commercial and industrial justice. While progress results principally from the spontaneous and free action of individuals, it is also true that civilization rests upon restraints upon the natural and selfish actions of individuals. Restraints are as necessary in the economic field as in every field in which the interests of individuals may conflict, and as conditions become more complex, the restraints must increase in number.

The Sherman law is of course, in one sense, a restraint, and in another sense a guaranty of freedom. In the interest of producers as a whole and of the public, this law prohibits the development of any one concern into a monopoly. Just what degree of growth in size and trade-control, short of monopoly, is prohibited by the act as now supplemented, we do not know. Certainly the act does not commit the country to mere small-scale production, and there is ground to believe that it does not prohibit such developments of size and scope as are necessary or advisable for the highest degree of productive efficiency. There are those who hold that the maintenance of economic freedom,

as this law is intended to maintain it, is all that is socially necessary. Experience shows, however, that it is not sufficient to preserve and protect competition; many conditions of competition must be prescribed.

In all civilized countries of to-day, the standards of living are such that enormous quantities of commodities are demanded for daily use. The production of the supply of these depends upon the efforts of countless individuals, efforts constant and laborious. Under an industrial system based on economic freedom, the individual, instead of having a set task at a fixed return, depends for his income upon the reward which others voluntarily make for his services. These services may take the passive form of permitting others to use in some manner something that he could use wholly for his own immediate benefit, or the active form of personal effort, mental or physical. But every individual has the most compelling of reasons for steadily rendering some form of service, and it is the lure of reward which supplies the motive force which operates the vast and complicated commodity-producing machinery. Unless the scale of living is radically changed, the calling out of industrial energy is indispensable. What we now see, however, is that, to call this energy into play, it may not be necessary to permit unlimited rewards for even the most useful producers, and that those engaged in the industrial conflict must submit to rules that minimize injury to others and that insure efforts which are genuinely contributive.

One class of these restraints has long been familiar: restraints from turning either into lower prices for the consumer or profits for the producer, funds which should go to insure proper working conditions for those engaged in labor. Of such character are the factory

acts and hours-of-labor acts. A more recent development of somewhat kindred nature takes the form of the acts placing upon industries the financial burdens of industrial accidents and diseases, and also minimum-wage acts. Another and later class of legal restraints seeks to secure through publicity adherence in business to sound financial methods. One of the evils of complete industrial freedom has been that over-eager or unscrupulous business men have dissipated capital of great social value in enterprises which were unsoundly planned or conducted. The loss from this source is comparable to loss from fire: wealth which might be kept in productive use is destroyed. Acts requiring statement to public authorities of the financial operations of businesses hitherto regarded as entirely private, are intended to reduce such loss. The framers of such acts do not, or should not, attempt to prescribe any business methods to be followed: they should rely upon the probability that actions and policies which are subject to report must be such as to stand scrutiny.

No practicable method has been suggested for imposing by law direct limitations upon the rewards of successful producers, although publicity of earnings will tend against excessive profits either through the inviting of competition or through creating fear of some other form of attack. Nor has any method been suggested for the legal establishment of a fairer division between workers in industries and those who manage them or supply the capital.

For the working out of limitations of this character, we must look to those engaged in industry rather than to any other group. As a matter of selfprotection, business men must limit their own profits to returns which bear an intelligible and fair relation to the

services rendered, and must establish methods of compensation for their employees which adequately and fairly recognize their great part in the process. In recent years, there has been a striking effort among far-seeing business administrators to solve these and other business problems. Indeed, business management is being gradually transformed from a mere clever striving for immediate profits into a science of production which recognizes the relations of industry to the public and the relations of the different factors within each industrial organization, and attempts to deal with those relations and factors on a broad and firm basis of principle. The establishment by universities of schools of business administration is a recognition and an expression of this movement.

To a large extent reliance for economic justice must always be placed, not upon legal restraints, but upon the self-restraint of those carrying on the industry. Maintenance of civil order depends more upon the law-abiding disposition of the people than upon the strong arm of the police. Political parties have to offer legislative panaceas for all industrial ills, but whatever legal or industrial system may be adopted, we still have to trust largely for justice

to the development of a spirit of equity and forbearance among all those engaged in industry; without this there will be loss and hardship under any system. As sound methods and policies are worked out by the more progressive and earnest men who are devoting themselves to these problems, it may be advisable from time to time to enact laws which require the adherence of all producers to the standards made and tested out by the more enlightened.

The development of industrial justice will take time, but there is no short cut. Government control or government ownership of industry does not solve the problems of the relations of producers to consumers or of the suppliers of capital and administrative skill to those engaged in simple labor. Such a change would merely restrict us to political solutions of these problems as opposed to solutions which must be worked out by those engaged in industry and giving their whole thought to the process. And it would subject us to the very real danger of so diminishing the necessity for effort and the scope for ambition as to cause greater loss through failure to call reluctant human energy and inventiveness into play, than now occurs through misdirection of part of that energy.

I

THE professional ministry has its problems, for example, the scarcity of candidates presenting themselves for the office, or the imposition of theological tests, but it is not commonly perceived that itself also is a problem. To reflect on the great army of bishops, clergy, ministers, missioners; upon the enormous volume of preaching which is emitted week by week; upon the innumerable sacramental celebrations, ceremonial observances, to say nothing of the multifarious subsidiary organizations of which the professional minister is supposed to be the presiding, inspiring, sustaining genius; to ask what it all amounts to; and, in part answer to the question, to be confronted with a diminishing and decaying institution from which power and authority in the world are swiftly passing, an institution which no longer leads the thought or wins the interest or directly influences the lives of the vast majority of the men and women of even western civilization, is to conceive a suspicion that something is wrong, or wanting.

In a previous article, the present writer suggested certain fundamental considerations which might account in large measure for the 'failure of the Church'; the purpose of this article, which must be regarded as supplementary to that, is to examine in a general way the position of the professional ministry in order to see if something is lacking here, some quality of spirit, or some condition of its manifest

ation and utterance, which may act

as a contributory cause of this failure. Nothing will be said here to give any encouragement to those facile faultfinders who, in any particular instance of breakdown or non-success, lay the blame upon the paid official. Most often this is egregiously unjust and obviously untrue. It may safely be said that no institution is better served than is the Christian Church by the devotion, generosity, and enthusiasm of its salaried or beneficed leaders. The additional virtue of 'competence' might have been placed to the credit side of their account; but this is a complicated matter, for the elucidation of which this article is partly written. Competence is related to function; and before it can be said that a man is competent, it must be asked, What is he supposed to do?

the

The prophetic note is largely lacking in the professional ministry, prophetic note, not necessarily the prophetic spirit; that is to say, the latter may be present, but the right conditions for its utterance do not prevail. By the 'prophetic note' is meant, in simplest terms, the human voice as the organ of the God-consciousness. It would be absurd to say that this is altogether absent from the modern Church. It is not. It is to be heard in the Roman Catholic Communion, in which there are special preaching orders, 'schools of the prophets'; but the sacramentarian and institutional aspect of religion dominates, and he is something less than a prophet